Google is suing an alleged scammer for operating an elaborate scheme to flood its search product with pretend companies and opinions.
In the complaint filed Friday, Google accuses the defendant, Ethan Hu, of abusing the corporate’s merchandise “to create pretend on-line listings for companies that don’t exist, and to bolster them with pretend opinions from individuals who don’t exist.” After establishing the pretend firms, Hu and 20 unnamed co-defendants allegedly offered these pretend listings to different companies seeking to promote their very own providers in Google’s search outcomes.
Over the past two years, Google says the defendants created over 350 pretend enterprise profiles that obtained no less than 14,000 pretend opinions. Whereas Google can routinely create listings for companies, enterprise house owners can even make them themselves by both requesting a verification postcard be despatched to their tackle or by proving their legitimacy on both a voice or video name with a Google worker.
In its criticism, Google accuses the defendants of posing as pretend enterprise house owners on these calls “armed with an elaborate set of props which they use to cross off their pretend listings as actual small companies.”
In a single occasion, Google included an image it believes to be Hu on one in all these calls, the place Hu allegedly claimed to be related to a fictitious chiropractor, Wilmington Chiro Well being, in June 2021. In March of 2022, he allegedly confirmed a Google worker a software bench to show the existence of “Western Los Angeles Storage Door Restore,’’ then used the identical bench to confirm two different companies in numerous components of the nation later that month. In one more occasion, Google says Hu assembled important oils and a therapeutic massage chair to confirm an aromatherapy and reiki enterprise.
Google claims that Hu would promote these listings for hire and sale on Fb pages. In a single instance, Hu allegedly requested potential patrons for $1,000 for entry to a pretend plumbing itemizing in Monterey, California, that obtained “‘~40 calls and 5 kind submissions’” the month earlier than, probably from folks within the space looking for a plumber. Callers can be routed by means of that pretend itemizing to an actual plumbing enterprise with a much less subtle on-line footprint.
Google is asking to be awarded damages and for Hu and his co-defendants to be completely banned from promoting or promoting false verification providers.
The lawsuit comes as Google makes an attempt to fend off competitors from a brand new set of opponents just like the AI-assisted Bing and ChatGPT providers, in addition to a possible flood of low-quality AI-generated search results. “Prospects belief Google to supply authoritative and dependable outcomes,” Renny Hwang, Google’s head of litigation, stated in a Friday weblog publish. “However that belief is misplaced in the event that they spend cash based mostly on pretend opinions.”